Snow was down to sea level with power outages right across the country.   The cold snap rolled in on 14 August 2011 with the greatest snow falls on 16-17 August.

It’s snowed here in Upper Hutt at the base of the valley twice in my lifetime that I remember.  Once was when I was a child, during the night but the snow didn’t settle.  The other was just a month ago, but it lasted only for a few hours and then melted.

This polar blast was sucked up straight from Antarctica and dumped over New Zealand.  The snow has melted now – but I captured the scenes on my trusty Canon point and click, and now you can enjoy it too

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I make these the other morning and had them lightly toasted with homemade lemon curd.  They were delicious.  Here’s the recipe:

• 15 grams compressed yeast OR 1 packet (approx 7 grams) active yeast OR 7 grams (a tablespoon) of surebake yeast
• 15 grams melted butter
• 1 tsp sugar
• 550 ml warm milk
• pinch of salt
• 450 grams plain flour

Warm your milk in the microwave until tepid (not too hot or you’ll kill the yeast)

If using compressed yeast, pop your yeast and sugar into a mixing bowl and beat on high until creamy.  Add warm milk to bowl.  Mix until yeast begins to float.

If using active or surebake yeast, pour your warm milk and sugar into the mixing bowl and give it a whirl til combined.  Sprinkle yeast over the milk and let “bloom” for about 5 minutes.

Add melted butter and salt.

Start adding sifted flour a large tablespoon at a time until the mixture resembles thick paint consistency.  Add a  little more or less flour until you get a reasonably thick batter.

Cover and put in a warm place until it bubbles – about an hour.

Pop it in the fridge for about 30-45 mins to firm up.

Drop spoonfuls of mixture into a greased medium heat pan.  The bottom should go golden and the top will bubble, then crater, then dry.  I like to wait until it’s almost dry before flipping over – about 4-5 mins.

This makes a lot of mixture.  You can make the crumpets without flipping over but until the top is dry, then freeze in an airtight bag.

When required, just defrost and pop into the toaster.

Just like a bought one

[Edited to add alternatives to compressed yeast]

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It’s now hosted at the groovy little site over at http://bucketlist.org/list/pgirl/

Image by David Jones via Flickr

Thanks for visiting I’m looking for comments and feedback on the plot outline for a new story – short poll at the bottom.

Killer Bees from MARS

Theme                       Technology without ethics can be deadly

Setting                       Dallas, Texas and parts of South America, in the current day

Characters                Spencer Doyle – CEO and chief technologist MARS (Mobile Autonomous Robotic Systems)

Elwood Woodrow – Investor/Business Tycoon – Woodrow Investments

Clarence Olsen – Retired CEO and Founder of MARS

Rory Olsen – Deputy CEO MARS (Clarence’s headstrong son)

Abby Napier – Gifted technologist at MARS

Honey bees in large parts of the world are dying, hives are being abandoned.

Thanks to developments by MARS and backing by Woodrow Investments – robotic bees planned to offer pollination strategies are released into the wild with great success.  Doyle receives world environment award for innovation.

Woodrow Investments puts unwanted pressure on MARS to develop bees with more artificial intelligence and almost military like capabilities to perform activities like surveillance.  Doyle is opposed to the direction but Rory Olsen supports it.

Rory Olsen creates a breakaway division (MARS Scope) to concentrate on more experimental developments, including worker bees who can build more bees without human intervention.

MARS Scope wins a major contract to deliver their modified bee robots to South America in an unprecedented pest eradication programme.  Olsen calls for Doyle’s resignation when he refuses to let the mainstream workforce deliver on the contract.

Olsen overturns Doyle as CEO in the boardroom/Doyle steps down.

Olsen is called to an emergency briefing after 14 men are killed in South America – purportedly by the MARS bees.

Olsen and Woodrow shift the blame to a local virus and deny any involvement.  Abby Napier discovers evidence that they are lying after observing similar bee behaviour in the lab.  She visits Doyle with her concerns.

The bees begin to target “pests” indiscriminately – using their AI to boost their killing power by forming small swarms and striking larger targets en masse.

Woodrow and Olsen launch a strike against the bees in South America.

The strike harms, but does not eradicate the South American colony.  Large numbers of bees are now being constructed as man is seen as the enemy.  Woodrow is killed during an attack.  Huge superswarms begin heading north from South America to their “home” in Dallas, leaving destruction and death in their wake.

Olsen panics and runs.  When the board gets wind of the crisis, Clarence Olsen steps in to denounce his son, and reinstates Doyle who has been working undercover with Napier on a potential solution.

Swarms infiltrate Dallas, breaking through glass and into buildings.

Reunion Tower

Doyle and Napier make their way to Reunion Tower with a massive low-frequency electrotransmitter which works to attract the bees through pseudo magnetism.  They release a new model of the pollinator robot into the air who also help to attract the bees towards Reunion Tower.  Once the swarm reaches its maximum, a high powered microwave pulse is emitted – destroying the bees and most other electronic equipment within a city block including MARS Scope.  Olsen is arrested.  MARS is shut down after a massive fall in shares and no investor confidence.  Doyle and Napier are cleared of any wrongdoing.  Napier becomes chief technologist of a new company – Just Technology focussing on fair and ethical practices – with CEO – Spencer Doyle.

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Thoughts for Larry Ferlazzo

Thinking about folklore and the importance of reading, I reflected on the transmittal of folklore and not on the legendary content itself.  Coming down through history, most folklore was passed on from mouth to ear and children could only hear the stories at a time when someone else was willing to relate them.  The importance of reading is in being able to access those stories – or any information – at a time that suits them.  There are issues too of stories being lost as time goes on, or of consistency – one is reminded of the Chinese Whispers game.

I often use history as a basis for comparison when introducing social media with newcomers to online tools.  Looking at world literacy statistics today, there are millions of people who are unable to read, but comparing those statistics with a time say 300 years ago is startling.  Almost all of the middle to lower classes were illiterate and relied on alternative forms of communication for the goings on of the day.  Add to that the concept that most people never travelled farther than 100 miles from the place they were born in their entire lives and you begin to paint a picture of an information poor society.

In terms of publishing, sites like this blog are an incredible achievement in providing a forum for the sharing of ideas.  Historically, the ability to publish was almost exclusively open to only the clergy, learned and very rich.  Even Jane Austen struggled initially to find a publisher for her stories as recently as 1811.  When we read historical documents, the stories of millions of people have been lost because of an inability to read, write and publish;  Perhaps they could have become some of our greatest literary works.

Social media, blogs, self-publishing and a range of other modern-day constructs bring the ability to record current history for all time in a way that has never been possible before.  The story of the everyday person can be told.  The ability to read is the first part of that process, and that is why it is so important.

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The best paper mix is well saturated and agitated.

I plan to use bleach as a wetting agent.

I have a paint stirrer that fits onto the end of a drill so that will be a low energy (for me) agitation option.

I’ll weigh the paper slush into even sized batches, and use hydraulic pressure (a modified log splitter) to ensure each brick has the same pressure applied to it.

I will split the finished, dried bricks into three batches:

1.  Planter box

The bricks will be formed into four walls over a wooden base and filled with potting mix and a selection of spring bulbs.

When the bulbs finish flowering in October/November I will disassemble and see  how well the bricks hold up to all that organic matter and water.

2. Small wall

The bricks will be formed into a single wall held together by weak mortar.

The unrendered wall will be evaluated at the same time as the planter

3. Loose bricks on concrete

How well can a set of  bricks out in all weathers hold up?

Pictures as the project develops.

Comments welcome!

What if you used them like bricks and made a compost bin from them – or rendered them to make a garden. or a garden wall. or a house.

how long does it take for a natural paper brick to break down?

You might think vermin might pose a problem, but haybale homes are commonplace now, with a bit of render on the outside. Why not paper? They are excellent insulators.

I’m going to experiment some more.

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There’s something very cool about parabolas. What I really want is a solar furnace to heat water and incinerate weeds.

Rob over at cockeyed made a “light sharpener”  with a ton of mirrors.

I thought I’d take a simpler tack and start with a parabolic trough.  Because it focuses light along a single line and not a single point it’s not as lethal as a dish – but first results are just swell.

Step one was to work out the size parabola to use.  Most materials come in 600mm or 1200mm wide so I figured I’d go for around 600mm wide.  I wanted the focal height to be 50mm so just used a standard calculation of

x²/4p where p = focal height.

In retrospect this made a reasonably thin parabola and I think a more shallow trough wouldn’t require the same degree of critical alignment with the sun.

At 300mm out from the very bottom of the parabola, the height is 450mm.

Step two was to mark out a pattern using these dimensions.  I plotted out the parabola on a piece of 3mm MDF we had lying around.

Next I used the pattern to mark out some flooring board and got my partner to cut 3 identical “negatives” of the pattern.

Step three was assembly – hang the whole thing together with some fence palings.  Luckily I have a good friend in the engineering trade and I was able to source some mirror stainless.  We screwed this into place and put a length of black PVC tube through the focal point – attached the hose and started it up.  Unfortunately the PVC tube melted and disintegrated before I got to take pics of this step.  Now before you think I’m a complete idiot -  I do realise that it was going to get very hot and plastic melts – but I was running cold water through the pipe and it was after 6pm at night… I thought it would last the 10 mins or so I wanted to run the test for.  Nevermind – I took the meltdown as a complete success!

We found a length of copper tube and replaced the PVC pipe:

I’m going to paint this black in the future.  Now with the trough angled at the sun that copper tube got VERY hot.  Too hot to touch.  Excellent.

We hooked up the hose with a very makeshift fitting:

and angled it towards the sun again.

Experiment One: I first turned the tap on at a dribble – the water was VERY hot – so hot that it was hard to let it dribble over your hand.

Experiment Two: Turn up the tap to a slow stream – the water was tepid.  By this time the water coming out of the tap was pretty cold, but after racing through the parabolic heat sleeve – it’s definitely warm.

Upcoming experiments -

Build a tank to hold the water and pump it through the trough in a circuit.

Build an oil tank and run a copper coil inside an old water cylinder to act as a heat exchanger.  If this works it might be worth hooking it up to a pre-tank before our instantaneous water supply.

If nothing else, this awesome free hot water will be great in the greenhouse this winter to heat the nutrient mix.

Have you built one of these?  Any pointers?

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